


Through the Watches of the Night

by ladysisyphus



Series: Over Hill and Under Hill [3]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 05:33:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3238163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysisyphus/pseuds/ladysisyphus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the outset, giving Bilbo a turn at watch had been an affectionate joke of a gesture: <i>Awake, Master Hobbit, for the sun's almost up anyway, so if you could look out a spell for any beasties bold enough to brave the daylight, and perhaps you wouldn't mind starting us all some spot of breakfast while you're at it? There's a good, useful fellow.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Through the Watches of the Night

At the outset, giving Bilbo a turn at watch had been an affectionate joke of a gesture: _Awake, Master Hobbit, for the sun's almost up anyway, so if you could look out a spell for any beasties bold enough to brave the daylight, and perhaps you wouldn't mind starting us all some spot of breakfast while you're at it? There's a good, useful fellow._ But as often is the case, time had revealed the truth of Bilbo's character such that Bilbo no longer felt startled at the weight of a hand against his shoulder in full dark, rousing him far from the edge of dawn.

This time it had been Glóin's hand doing the waking, with the always-apologetic grimace of a dwarf forced to concede his need for rest, and Bilbo did not hestitate in crawling out of his bedding, though it had been very warm and he had been dreaming of buttered scones. He shook his head once to clear it of sleep, then smiled as Glóin fell to his sleeping-place with a crash not unlike a landslide meeting its end. It was a testament to the rock-hard constitutions of his companions that not one so much as stirred, save Óin, who roused only long enough to throw half his tattered blanket over his brother's body. Moments later, they added their duet to the snoring symphony around them.

Much though he hated having his sleep disturbed, Bilbo found keeping watch a pleasant sort of solitude. He'd never thought of himself as especially antisocial -- though he had spent many of his days in the Shire in solitude, he was willing to chalk that up to circumstance before preference -- until finding himself in a company of individuals with no sense of personal space. Indeed, his initial estimation that surely he would at least be left to himself while attending to his business in the underbrush had been clearly mistaken, and he'd found himself in the awkward position of having to ask Ori to _please_ , if he would, just go stand somewhere at a distance for a few minutes. (He would be forever grateful that Ori had seemed baffled yet not put out by the request.) Dwarves clearly _understood_ privacy; they simply had no need of it themselves, and therefore did not think to offer it unasked to others.

But night found him alone with his thoughts, which were his customary sole companion, and familiar company at that. As he sat, eyes and ears alert to noise from beyond the reach of the fire's light, he let his mind wander to a song he'd been composing in his spare time. It was to be no great work (epic ballads did not often settle in for rhymes trite as "tired feet" and "like to eat"), but it was a pleasant enough diversion all the same. Truly, it was the only thing of home he'd brought with him.

He was in the midst of pondering whether or not there was another rhyme for "dwarf" in a language he knew (he'd used "wharf" twice already) when he heard a troubling noise -- not one from beyond the camp's edge, but from within it. He took a moment to register that it was indeed a noise of distress, and then another to pinpoint its source. Beneath his bedding, wrapped so tight that his face was hardly even visible, Thorin had begun to shift worrisomely. Fearing some unknown malady had befallen their leader during the night, Bilbo crossed the short distance between them and placed his hand against Thorin's bearded cheek.

Some greater awareness of their surroundings had so settled on him that Bilbo did not make a sound, lest he wake the sleeping company, even as a blade emerged from Thorin's bedding and stabbed its way toward Bilbo's throat. He did, however, have enough self-preservation to jerk back, a move that landed him square on his rump as Thorin emerged, heaving great breaths, his sleep-mussed hair a great mane about him.

"It's all right!" whispered Bilbo, loudly as he dared; he put up both his hands, bare palms facing outward, as harmless as he ever was and then some. "Thorin! It's all right! It's only me!"

He didn't honestly know what kind of efficacy such an approach would have, and as such he was weighing the merits of shouting for help when the veil of sleep lifted from Thorin's gaze and his bright eyes stared clear at him in the darkness, no longer seeing what was not there. "Bilbo," he said at last, his voice low and soft. He took a deep breath and let it out with measured slowness, then glanced at his hand, which still held the blade. With a noise of disgust, he returned it to the formerly unseen sheath from whence he'd drawn it.

"Are you--" Well, no, Thorin wasn't all right, that was plain to see, so asking after it would have done no good. Instead, Bilbo offered silently his water-skin, and after only a moment's hesitation, Thorin took it, drinking deep, his eyes downcast.

Hobbits often wished one another pleasant dreams, because they understood the opposite were always at hand; the wider world was a vast and frightful place, after all, and thinking about that too hard was likely to spoil one's sleep, especially if one was a hobbit, and very small in the grand scheme of things. But the look about Thorin was one of shame, and Bilbo sensed drawing the blade was only one of Thorin's perceived humiliations at the moment. "If -- if you're awake," Bilbo offered, his voice still a heavy whisper, "would you mind staying up with me? I thought -- well, it's just that I thought I heard something in the trees."

He'd heard nothing there, of course, save the quite ordinary flutterings of night birds, but at the request, Bilbo saw Thorin pull his shoulders straighter. "I will keep watch with you," Thorin said with a nod, pulling himself from bedding. He was all but fully dressed even in sleep, down to his heavy boots. Ready to run at a moment's notice, Bilbo thought.

There was a tree whose roots had grown up around it, and it was there Bilbo had made his vigilant perch before, so it was to there he returned, finding a nook that could accommodate his rear while supporting his back, an odd sort of natural luxury. Thorin followed close behind, though the position he took was far less comfortable: legs hunched beneath him, making him look like nothing so much as a raptor poised for the hunt. His right hand came to rest not on the grip of his knife, but near enough that the point was made.

The light of the campfire had died down enough that only the edges of its glow shone on their faces, but the three-quarters moon lit up the sky almost like daybreak. Under guise of keeping alert, Bilbo stole glances at Thorin every so often and marveled at the way its cold blue light made even his exhausted visage regal. Caught in the moonlight, the threads of grey in his dark hair lit up like veins of silver in a mine wall, and his noble profile was so handsome and still that he might indeed have been a statue, hewn from earth instead of flesh.

Were they hobbits both, they'd scare away both the dark and dark dreams by chatting about nothing of consequence: thoughts on the weather and the growing season, perhaps, or whose pie would win the ribbon at the midsummer festival that year, or the best remedies for hayfever. But Thorin was a dwarf, and more than that, he was _Thorin_. What silence there was to have, Bilbo reckoned, Thorin Oakenshield was going to have it.

Thus, Bilbo nearly jumped out of his skin to hear the soft thunder of Thorin's voice: "She was a young girl, my sister's friend."

Despite his every conversational instinct, Bilbo made no comment whatsoever to this, only inclined his head so Thorin would know he was listening. "I knew her by sight only, not by name," Thorin continued a moment later, his eyes distant again. "And when the fire came, they looked first to the sky, and then to me. She was no different. She grabbed--" Thorin's hand made a fist at the hem of his shirt, and Bilbo wondered whether he knew he was doing that at all. "She caught me and begged me, please, don't let it, don't let--" His voice disappeared behind his clenched jaw. Bilbo could see the knot working in Thorin's throat as he swallowed again and again, not against dryness but against memory.

After a long, heavy silence, Thorin raked his hair back from his face with his fingers. "There was a small room just off the great hall, barely a closet, and I told her to stay there, and that I'd find her when it was safe again. But fire is greedy; it steals the air. I was near a plume billowing above, and I felt ... as though my very breath were being ripped from my chest. At last, the call to evacuate was sounded, and I--" A great frown of pain contorted Thorin's features. "She lay there, still, untouched by the flame, but with no air left in the room or life left in her.

"And I can--" There was a hitch to Thorin's voice, a pause he worked through by clearing his throat, without acknowledging what had choked him in the first place. "There was no time, of course. Not for her, nor for the others. Trapped below, in caverns and tunnels only accessible from the outside through the Great Hall, there could have been ... there _must_ have been...."

As he had no way to tell time out there in the wild, Bilbo felt as though years passed between the time Thorin finished speaking and the time Bilbo realized Thorin was not going to speak again on the subject. Though self-preservation told him to run from the topic, to let the silence build or at least to change the subject, a flame of boldness had been kindled in his belly and was not to be doused lightly. "You blame yourself," Bilbo said, his eyes fixed on the moon, the trees, their sleeping companions -- anywhere but Thorin's face.

"I have every right," answered Thorin, his tone grave.

"No, you don't," said Bilbo, who bit his tongue at the thought that he would speak like this to a _king_. But no, he wasn't speaking to a king now; he was speaking with Thorin, and though there was great overlap between the two, Bilbo sensed one realm could indeed be left for the other. "Everyone here would follow you into fire, and if you couldn't lead them out again, they'd burn knowing you'd tried. And that's no small thing."

"Into fire," Thorin echoed, and a thoughtful sigh escaped his lips. "So many here were not yet born when Erebor fell. Of fire, they know only stories. Not its heat, not the stench, not the way the hairs on your head and face blacken and curl at its touch."

"Dwalin said that's why you--" Unsure of how to finish the sentence, Bilbo gestured at his own smooth face, then pointed to Thorin, then went back to rubbing his chin.

Though it had been a clumsy pantomime, Thorin gave a nod that showed that he understood. "I keep it close-shorn as an outward reminder that my people's shame is mine. That is what it means to be the king."

There was much he didn't understand about dwarf culture, Bilbo knew, but at the same time, the idea that a neat shave might be some sort of black mark on a person's character made Bilbo feel sharp pangs of anger. "Well, we'd best not bring _me_ before any other dwarves, then," he said, this time giving his soft cheeks a sharp poke. "Heaven knows what they'll think _I've_ done."

Thorin snorted at that, but when Bilbo turned to look, he saw the edges of Thorin's mouth had curled into a smile far kinder than the noise that came with it. "If they know anything of hobbits, they'll think nothing of it."

"True, but supposing they _don't_. 'What do you mean, _can't_ grow a beard?'" Bilbo said, recollecting the conversation by doing his best impression of Bofur -- one which was lacking, perhaps, yet landed close enough that Bilbo saw Thorin's smile widen with surprise. "I mean, I can't grow a beard. 'Do you suppose you just haven't _tried_ hard enough?' No, I suppose I haven't tried at _all_ , because I _can't_. 'Ah, well, when I was your age, my own beard was a bit patchy.' Nope. No. Fully grown -- middle-aged, even. Can't. Won't. The end. The longest hair I've ever seen on a hobbit's chin was my great-grandfather's, one curly little strand, and he plucked it when it got enough to be noticed, so certain he was it had arrived in error on the wrong end of his head."

Another little snort escaped Thorin, though now as Bilbo looked, he could see that Thorin's shoulders were trembling slightly and he'd pressed his closed fist against his mouth. "Are you -- are you _laughing_?" asked Bilbo, feeling a giggle coming on himself. "You're laughing! I didn't think you capable."

"Not _laughing_ ," said Thorin sternly, though he kept part of his face eclipsed by his hand a long moment after. "Simply ... mourning your beardless plight."

"Well!" Bilbo folded his arms across his chest in a mock huff. "Then I'll be sad for your dainty feet."

"Dainty feet?"

"You've got to put shoes on them; they must be fragile as glass." Bilbo wiggled his bare toes, which had borne him over some unpleasant terrain this journey, but had never once complained. Well, not much, at any rate.

Thorin lifted his face and open palms to the sky, an obvious prayer to some unspecified source to save him from the insults of hobbits. But his smile was firm now, and honest, not the forced lifting of the face Bilbo sometimes saw him affect when trying to coax on Fíli and Kíli -- and most importantly of all, it carried over nothing of the distant memories that had troubled his sleep. "I do believe that's the first time in my life that anything of mine, body or property, has been deemed 'dainty'."

"Well, good. Builds character."

"To be insulted?" asked Thorin, raising one skeptical eyebrow.

Bilbo shook his head, settling himself into the roots so that he could look at Thorin without having to turn his head. It wasn't strictly a comfortable arrangement, but he'd dozed in enough trees in his life to be flexible about such things. "To be reminded that ... it's not all serious. Nor is it all bad. It's a lesson your kinsmen seem to know well," he said, thinking of the uproarious stories of a misfortunate hunting trip Dori had regaled them with the night before. Seeing Thorin's face begin to fall, Bilbo added quickly, "And I understand that you're the king, and, as you know, that's very important, and you're quite responsible for many things, and people look to you for ... well, I've seen the way they look at you. But you can do all that, you can have _all_ that, and _still_ have soft little baby toes."

"I will have you know," said Thorin, still unable to banish the smile from his lips; he pointed at Bilbo in a manner less regal and more of the kind of a man liable to start a bar brawl, "I have a cousin known as Dain _Iron_ foot."

"Really." Bilbo did his best to look unimpressed, though this was indeed news to him. "Called that because his feet are like iron, or because he puts iron on his feet?"

"That--" Thorin stopped short. "That is wholly irrelevant."

"That is _entirely_ relevant!" Bilbo exclaimed, or meant to exclaim, except that halfway through the sentence, the late hour and his reclining position turned all his words into a monstrous yawn. "Relevant," he tried again as he was done, though by that point he suspected he'd lost most of the weight of the statement.

Thorin chuckled, and this time he didn't even try to hide the reaction. Instead, he shrugged the furred wrap off his shoulders and tossed it onto the lap of Bilbo, who'd had lighter rocks thrown at him. "Sleep will not come for me again this night," he said as it landed on Bilbo's lap, "so in my place, you may take my share."

An attempt at protest was stifled before its first sound by another yawn, and by the time he could force his lips together again, Bilbo conceded he'd lost the battle of his staying awake without having had the chance to mount even the feeblest defense. "Bifur's to be next," he said, even as he knew Thorin would be the one of the company whose eyes first saw the dawn.

"As such becomes necessary, I will awaken him." Thorin nodded toward the heavy fur, which Bilbo had begun to settle around him. "Wrap it about your neck and face, and you may even be so fortunate as to dream of having a beard."

Bilbo rolled his eyes as ostentatiously as he could, but as he snuggled beneath the heavy folds, he found his heart had begun to flutter in his chest. A heavy smell of burning pine and pitch still clung about its folds, but as he drew it closer to his nose, he could smell something stronger and more familiar beneath that. It should disgust him, he knew, the idea of how much filth and grime that garment had surely accumulated since its last washing (if indeed it had ever received a washing at all), but instead he leaned into its folds and breathed deep. It was warm in its embrace, and safe.

A kindly gesture it had been, and kindly was surely all -- an act of pity for a hobbit ill-suited to the chill that rode upon the edge of the late season, and perhaps an act of gratitude for chasing off the fiery past, at least for one quiet night. But as Bilbo tucked himself into the crook of the roots and drew the heavy pelt around him, the sound of Thorin's muffled laughter still filled his ears, and long after he shut his eyes, he could see the way the moonlight had threaded itself through silver strands of hair.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://ladysisyphus.livejournal.com/879461.html).


End file.
